A Kentucky pastor is thanking God for sparing his life after he fell more than 30 feet off a roof, but returned to preaching only two days later.
GracePointe Baptist Church Pastor Mark Bishop thanked God and the thousands of people who were praying for his recovery after his wife posted to Facebook that he had an accident.
“No one falls 30 feet and usually even lives from it,” he told Kentucky Today. “I believe it was the prayers of God’s people.”
In early December, Bishop went on his roof to hammer down a shingle that had come up from a previous storm, the outlet reported. He was wearing casual shoes on a slippery roof and before he knew it, he was slipping.
“Once I started sliding, there is no stopping,” he said.
He was knocked unconscious from the fall and when he woke up, he was choking on his vomit. He told Siri to call his wife, Kim, so he could tell her he had fallen off the roof.
His wife and her son, Wesley, reached him quickly.
“I couldn’t feel anything at first,” he said. “I kept having them look in my ears and nose. Wesley, who was with his girlfriend, began to pray.”
Bishop was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Meanwhile, Kim called on people to pray.
Doctors ran several tests on the pastor expecting to find internal injuries such as broken ribs, broken neck, brain bleeds, collapsed lung, or pelvis injury.
But they couldn’t find anything – a miracle Bishops credits to answered prayer.
“The nurse said, ‘We don’t know what to say. It’s a miracle,'” he shared.
“Prayer works and God is good,” Kim wrote on Facebook.
The Louisville pastor believes God was using the situation to turn people to Him.
“I may have been broken when I left my property, but two hours later, not anything was broken and God was getting the glory,” he said.
Just a few days later, Bishop announced he would be returning to his church to preach, despite the doctor’s orders.
“I told him, ‘This is my calling, this is my passion. If I don’t go, I’ll be at home wringing my hands and watching it on the screen”, Bishop recalled telling the doctor.
He arrived at the church the Sunday following the incident, just in time to speak before his congregation.
Bishop was eager to start his series on Christmas.
“God truly spared me from something bad,” he wrote on Facebook. “I have sat (and laid) around thinking of how this could have changed my Christmas forever…But nothing, however, will prepare our hearts better for Christmas than the Christmas story itself. See you at GracePointe Baptist Church tomorrow – Lord willing!”
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